It’s a simple menu at Mo’Bay Beignet Co. — mostly just beignets and coffee. And when the shop’s Auburn location opened, there was a line down the College Street sidewalk to get some.
The new Mo’Bay Beignet Co. store in Auburn had its grand opening on Friday at 7:30 a.m. This is Mo’Bay’s first location outside Mobile, where the shop got its start.
“Sometimes with a restaurant you kind of catch lightning in a bottle,” said Mo’Bay Beignet Auburn owner Tripp Skipper. “And some concepts are transferable to other markets, and we just feel like this is a great, simple concept that’s transferable to a place like Auburn.”
Skipper grew up in Mobile, where founder Jaclyn Robinson opened the first Mo’Bay Beignet shop a few years ago. All the credit for the recipes — the beignets, the special buttercream or cinnamon sauce to dip them in — goes to Robinson, he said. He just got on board to help it grow.
“With me living here, I wanted to put one here, and I just felt it would be a hit in Auburn with everybody, but especially with college students,” Skipper said. “Being right here downtown on College Street, close to campus and close to all the development that’s taking place, I just thought it would be something fun to bring here for the community.”
It took some work to get the store ready for its grand opening though.
“Man, this has been eight months,” he said; that's about how much time it took to turn what was once the Uncommon leasing office into a fully functioning store. “We converted this space into a restaurant, and it took a while.”
It's a way for him to bring part of his hometown to The Plains.
“I’m just a Mobile guy bringing Mo’Bay to Auburn, that’s the way I look at it," Skipper said.
Mo’Bay had its soft opening on Wednesday night for a few guests and employees, and Skipper said he got some good press and traction on social media for the grand opening, which is how Lauren Good, the restaurant's first guest on Friday morning, heard about it. Good, junior in accounting, said the owner of the Irritable Bao has also been promoting the store.
“It should be a fun new addition to downtown,” Good said. “I think it was a great idea to bring down here, there’s not a lot of choices, so something new to make everyone excited.”
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Evan Mealins, senior in philosophy and economics, is the editor-in-chief of The Auburn Plainsman.
